


The Hawkeye Code

by likeadeuce



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29272170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: Clint Barton is an old rocker. Kate Bishop and her band are the next big thing.The city has changed, the scene has changed, but just maybe, the music can live on.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Kate Bishop
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	The Hawkeye Code

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Huntress79](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntress79/gifts).



> There is *actually* an American punk band called the Avengers, but I imagine this fic is hardly the biggest name branding problem they're having these days.

Clint Barton pulled his cap down over his forehead, hoping the kid at the ticket desk wouldn’t recognize him.

“Thirty bucks. ID?”

Clint blinked. It had been a while since he’d been in a music club, and much much longer since he'd been _carded_ in a music club. Carded in the Bullseye, of all places. Even in the long-distant time when Clint Barton was a fresh faced youth (surely, surely there had been such a time), places on this block rarely checked ID. Why would they? They wanted you to come in and buy their booze. Either the New York State Liquor Authority had been paid off, or its agents were deeply uninterested in traveling down this street after dark.

Those were, as Lou Reed had sung about an even more distant past, different times. Now the Bullseye had a new coat of paint and its staff cared whether the patrons were legal. Clint considered turning around, walking out, and finding some place in this borough that was still willing to look dingy. (Because -- _thirty bucks_?) But, what the hell. Clint pulled out a ten and a twenty and his driver's license, then tilted back his cap and helped the kid out by putting on the same clenched-teeth face he was making in the photo. A real fan would know recognize his re-creation of the expression Clint "Hawkeye" Barton displayed on the album cover for The Avengers’ self-titled debut back in . . .well, it didn’t matter how long ago that record came out. The Avengers had been an iconic part of the city’s nineties scene, and legends never . . .

“Thanks, Mr. Burton,” the kid said. Clint didn’t _like_ that he thought of people in their twenties as kids, but this guy had zits and a fuzzy excuse for a beard and was either near sighted or -- and this was seeming more and more possible -- had not been _born_ the last time Clint’s band headlined this club. 

Clint felt stupid that he’d even bothered trying to disguise his face. Then he looked down at the ticket. “What the hell is The Hawkeye Code? I thought this was the secret show for the chick from Young Avengers.” The kid’s quizzical look gave Clint a sinking feeling that ‘chick’ was not the right word, and he corrected to “The young lady,” realized that made him sound absolutely elderly, and said, “You know. Katie Bishop.”

“The Hawkeye Code is Kate Bishop’s solo act. Named for some old guy who inspired her or whatever.”

“Some old guy,” Clint repeated. “And I guess being ‘inspired’ makes it okay to rip somebody off.”

A shrug. “I don’t know about that. But I think she wrote that one single about him. You know that one that goes --” And Clint had to listen to the bridge of ‘Trick Arrow’ sung right in his face by an infant who thought a trust fund kid named Katie Bishop had written it.

“Never mind!” Clint threw up his hands, or he would have but he had to stand there while a glow-in-the-dark wrist band was attached to his hand so that it was absolutely clear to everyone that he was way past twenty one. Clint opened the inner door, and the place was almost empty. _No one’s even coming to Katie’s secret show_ , he thought with mean-spirited satisfaction before he remembered, right. He was two hours early. That was part of the plan. 

Clint ordered a beer, nursed it on a barstool, and waited for ‘The Hawkeye Code’ to start her sound check.

*

Clint was on his knees in the Bullseye’s green room, foraging around in what he was at least fifty-one percent sure was Kate Bishop’s gear, when he heard a throat clear behind him.

Clint raised his hands and turned around slowly. “Okay,” he admitted. “This looks bad.”

Kate was leaning in the doorway, reflective purple sunglasses pulled down to the end of her nose. She looked younger than the magazine photos he had seen, and less grainy than the YouTube clips of her performances. “Do you think?” 

“There’s a perfectly good explanation. I just wanted to get a look at your guitar.”

Kate pointed out toward the stage. “You mean the one I was using for sound check?”

“I mean, yeah, at first. But that was obviously a replica. So I thought you might be hiding the real thing.”

“Hiding,” Kate repeated. “That’s an interesting way to put it. You think I should just leave a Music Man Cutlass that was custom made in the nineties for guitar legend Clint Barton lying around where it could get stolen by a low life like, just for example, Clint Barton?”

“At least you recognized me.” Clint got to his feet, slowly, hoping to preserve his dignity. His back popped, like it sometimes did these days. He could feel his face curl into a cringe. Definitely very dignified.

“You are my creative and artistic idol." Kate sounded wounded. “I say it in every interview.”

“And you sing my signature song and use my nickname and copy my solos note for note --”

“I do not!” For the first time, Kate actually looked nonplussed. Plussed? Which ever was the one that meant her rich girl face scrunched into a pout. "If you think I'm copying you note for note, you haven't even listened to my solos."

Clint shrugged. She was _sort of_ right but he wasn't giving her the pleasure of admitting it. "I don't expect but so much originality from a trust fund kid who can buy her quote creative and artistic idol unquote’s favorite guitar and think that makes her his heir apparent.”

Kate actually stomped her foot. The boots she was wearing were excellent for stomping. “If that guitar meant so much to you why’d you just leave it with Steve?”

This stopped him short. “You and Steve Rogers are on a first name basis?” Clint was entirely unsure whether _he_ and Steve were on a first name basis anymore. It was hard to remember what had broken the band up but he didn’t even know how he would reach his old front man at this point. Steve had gotten out of the business for good when the label screwed him out of their last residuals. He was supposed to have retired to a suburb somewhere. 

Kate ran her hands through her hair. “It’s a long story. When the band and I got together, some people at your old label were trying to get us to record your songs as a gimmick. We never wanted to be that -- the name was just a tribute -- and when we realized the suits had screwed Steve out of his own songwriting credits, my lawyers helped him get them back.”

“Your dad’s lawyers.” 

“Whatever! The point is, Steve has his songs back now. And before you ask why we kept ‘Trick Arrow’ --”

“You don’t have to say it. I wrote that one all by myself and no one knew where to reach me.”

“Exactly. Now. I bet there’s a story in that.”

There were so many stories. If Clint started, he wouldn’t know where to leave off. “So now that you’ve cleverly lured me out of hiding by doing an extremely unsecret secret show in the club where we started it all --” When Clint began the sentence, accusing her of making a devious plan to lure him out into public was a joke, but by the time he got to the end -- “Katie!” he yelped. "You tricked me!"

Kate shrugged. "I did what I had to do. You could have made this easier by just emailing our website.”

“I did! I kept getting return messages that said, ‘Very funny’.”

“Ahh." Kate put a hand to her forehead. “I knew there was a downside to putting Tommy in charge of social media.”

“Where’s the rest of your band anyway? Shouldn’t they be supporting you?”

“Nah, I didn’t exactly tell them about tonight. Hence, secret show. I want them to find out on YouTube like everybody else, when this performance goes viral.”

“You think quite a bit of yourself, young lady.” Yep. Clint still sounded a million years old, even to himself.

“I think when video gets out of the old and new Hawkeyes shredding on ‘Trick Arrow’ together. . . that is if you think you’re up for it. I was even gonna let you use the Cutlass. It's _not_ a replica by the way. That's just what an old axe looks like when you get it cleaned. I hope this isn’t the part where you’re going to tell me you haven’t touched a guitar in years."

She was closer than she knew to being right. Clint hadn’t touched a guitar in years -- until he saw that video of Kate Bishop playing his song. Now everything was different. He'd been practicing nonstop. “Oh,” Clint said, “I am definitely up for it.”

“Yes!” Kate pumped her arm.

“And then -- if it works out -- do I get my guitar back?”

" We'll see how tonight goes."

*

Tonight went very well.

And if the viral version of the video went out with the caption, “Some old guy playing guitar with Kate Bishop” -- Clint was having too much fun to care.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by the "Young Avengers Presents: Hawkeye" comic by Matt Fraction and Alan Davis, where Clint challenges Kate to win his bow and the 'Hawkeye' title back from her.
> 
> "Those were different times" is a line from _Sweet Jane_ by the Velvet Underground.


End file.
